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Editing 10 bit uncompressed in FCP 5- Help needed
Hey guys,
Had a few quick questions…I have been working primarily on miniDV till now and I have a DV deck connected to my computer (G5 Quad) through Firewire that I use to capture footage, as well as monitor footage on a regular 14 inch CRT TV. I will be shooting my first documentary on Digi-Beta this week and I wanted to be able to edit the film on my computer rather than hire out a suite. I will be getting a local production house to capture the footage for me on an external Firewire 400 drive since I don’t have any capture card installed. The final output will be to a SD DVD and I will be using FCP 5.0.4. My questions are as follows
1) Considering the final output is an SD DVD, is it worthwhile getting the production house to capture uncompressed 10 bit footage? If not, then what codec should I tell them to capture on?
2) Will I be able to edit uncompressed 10 bit footage in realtime in FCP 5? Will the program support it and will the Firewire 400 drive support it?
3) Will I be able to monitor the footage through my CRT TV and my DV deck?II would be great if someone could help me out in figuring out the questions above. Thanks a bunch…cheers!
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7 Replies
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[Syed Ali] “1) Considering the final output is an SD DVD, is it worthwhile getting the production house to capture uncompressed 10 bit footage? If not, then what codec should I tell them to capture on? “
If you have a system that can handle Uncompressed 10bit SD, sure. If you don’t, then you’ll need another codec.
[Syed Ali] “2) Will I be able to edit uncompressed 10 bit footage in realtime in FCP 5? Will the program support it and will the Firewire 400 drive support it? “
Yes on the first question. No on the Firewire 400 drive. FCP has been able to handle up to Uncompressed HD since Version 1.2.5.
[Syed Ali] “3) Will I be able to monitor the footage through my CRT TV and my DV deck?
“Yes on the TV. No to the DV deck. Uncompressed video playback requires a video card like the AJA Konas, a Matrox MXO or an external box like the AJA Io and Io HD.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media
HD and SD Production for Broadcast and Independent Productions.STOP STARING AND START GRADING WITH APPLE COLOR Apple Color Training DVD available now!
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You will not be able to playback 10-bit uncompressed without a raid. You will drop frames constantly as 10-bit requires far greater throughput than firewire 400 or even 800 can sustain. Otherwise, editing and monitoring with FCP ver. 5 are not issues.
David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los AngelesPOST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™
A forum host of Creative COW’s Apple Final Cut Pro, Business & Marketing, and Indie Film & Documentary forums.
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Hi Syed
[Syed Ali] “1) Considering the final output is an SD DVD, is it worthwhile getting the production house to capture uncompressed 10 bit footage? If not, then what codec should I tell them to capture on? “
Considering the delivery format, ideally, you could capture in ProRes. This would give you compressed, broadcast quality video that you should be able to playback on a decent firewire 400 drive. However, you would need an Intel Mac to take advantage of ProRes.
If you do not intend to do a lot of effects and grading work, you might consider just having the material captured as plain ol’ DV25. Believe me, although the codec will not allow the full color information of the digibeta footage to come through, you will see a noticably better acquisition from the camera than DV camera sourced footage (better optics, lenses etc), so you will still see the benefit – certainly enough given that you are going to deliver it in MPEG-2 on a DVD.
The main advantage for you is that you can use your DV deck for monitoring (as it will only accept DV down firewire) – otherwise you would need a video card for monitoring.
Your other option, if the deck accepts it, is to have the footage captured as DVCPro50, giving better quality at a sensible bitrate. This can be viewed over firewire on DVCPro decks – although I am guessing you do not have one.
The next step up would be to work in uncompressed 8-bit video, which you could not play back via your deck, but which could be edited via a Firewire 800 drive.
Whatever codec you choose, you will not find the editing process any different, assuming your drives are fast enough. An external e-Sata array (such as the many advertised here) would be a cheap way to achieve uncompressed 10-bit editing.
Edit Out Ltd
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FCP Editor/Trainer/System Consultant
EVS/VT Supervisor for live broadcast
RED camera transfer/post
Independent Director/Producer -
[Ben Holmes] “Considering the delivery format, ideally, you could capture in ProRes. This would give you compressed, broadcast quality video that you should be able to playback on a decent firewire 400 drive. However, you would need an Intel Mac to take advantage of ProRes. “
Not to mention the fact that he’s using FCP 5, and ProRes hadn’t been invented yet…
David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los AngelesPOST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™
A forum host of Creative COW’s Apple Final Cut Pro, Business & Marketing, and Indie Film & Documentary forums.
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Using a Lacie 1TB FW800 drive, I have no problem handling uncompressed 10 bit SD. I am working in PAL so the extra frame rate of NTSC may be a killer with 10 bit uncompressed.
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Thanks so much for all your help guys. And I appreciate the simple language used…have been trying to get answers from the net for a while now but most of the stuff seems to fly right over my head!
So as I understand it right now, I can edit 10 bit uncompressed on FCP 5 but to do that I would either need to have all my footage on the internal drive or on a RAID. If want to edit with my Firewire 400 drive, I would need to have the footage captured to a more compressed format that will lower the quality.
Just to give a little background, I am working in Pakistan and the final distribution format for all material here is either SD DVD or Mini-DV. All the TV channels run on Mini-DV and DVCAM (other than the state broadcaster which is still using U-matic, but that’s a story for another day!) so all the ads, music videos, etc are shot on film, captured from Digi-Beta as 10 bit uncompressed, edited on a 10 bit uncompressed timeline and then delivered on a Mini-DV.
Keeping the above scenario in mind, does it make a difference if I just get the footage captured as DV and edit it as DV? Or is it much better to edit uncompressed and then compress down at the time of delivery?
One more thing…I went and got a 5 second piece of uncompressed 10 bit video from the production house to try and see if it would work on my system. I put it on a 10 bit uncompressed timeline and not only did it work alright but I was able to monitor on my TV (through the DV deck). I know the timeline is not DV since I can watch the 10 bit clip in real time without any rendering. So does that mean that I can actually monitor uncompressed video through the deck or am I watching some down converted crappy version of the real thing (it looked pretty good though). The deck I am using is a regular DSR-11 DV deck. -
Hey I think I responded to a message rather than the thread so am re-upping my message here…
Thanks so much for all your help guys. And I appreciate the simple language used…have been trying to get answers from the net for a while now but most of the stuff seems to fly right over my head!
So as I understand it right now, I can edit 10 bit uncompressed on FCP 5 but to do that I would either need to have all my footage on the internal drive or on a RAID. If want to edit with my Firewire 400 drive, I would need to have the footage captured to a more compressed format that will lower the quality.
Just to give a little background, I am working in Pakistan and the final distribution format for all material here is either SD DVD or Mini-DV. All the TV channels run on Mini-DV and DVCAM (other than the state broadcaster which is still using U-matic, but that’s a story for another day!) so all the ads, music videos, etc are shot on film, captured from Digi-Beta as 10 bit uncompressed, edited on a 10 bit uncompressed timeline and then delivered on a Mini-DV.
Keeping the above scenario in mind, does it make a difference if I just get the footage captured as DV and edit it as DV? Or is it much better to edit uncompressed and then compress down at the time of delivery?
One more thing…I went and got a 5 second piece of uncompressed 10 bit video from the production house to try and see if it would work on my system. I put it on a 10 bit uncompressed timeline and not only did it work alright but I was able to monitor on my TV (through the DV deck). I know the timeline is not DV since I can watch the 10 bit clip in real time without any rendering. So does that mean that I can actually monitor uncompressed video through the deck or am I watching some down converted crappy version of the real thing (it looked pretty good though). The deck I am using is a regular DSR-11 DV deck.
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